Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a motion scoring method and apparatus.
Description of the Prior Art
One of the many genres of video games is the dancing game, where players are challenged to mimic a reference dance that is portrayed on screen. The portrayal is typically either by a videogame character, a recorded live-video performance, or icons indicating the dance actions to perform. The player's dance inputs are then captured by a videogame console using one or more means. These include a dance mat (an array of pressure sensors or switches that send signals to the videogame console responsive to the player's foot positions), and more recently a video camera such as the Sony® EyeToy®, to directly capture a video feed of the player. Another capture mechanism is the Sony Playstation Move®, which can be tracked visually in conjunction with the EyeToy, and which also transmits motion telemetry directly to a videogame console such as the Playstation 3® based upon data generated by internal accelerometers and/or gyroscopes.
Conventionally, the reference dance performances included in the game are codified or ‘marked up’ by the videogame developer. Thus for example, a codified dance may be expressed as a list of time codes and motion data, the motion data describing either an expected position of one or more limbs or an expected movement of one or more limbs at the indicated time. Such positioning or movement is typically relative to a start point, so that it can be applied to the initial position of the player. The input from the player is then compared to the marked-up performance to generate a score for their rendition of the dance.
However, marking up a dance performance in this manner is laborious and difficult.
The present invention seeks to mitigate or alleviate this problem.